(* in Bilbao, 1965)

1. Seis Anatemas en Busca de un Tango
2. Gualdrapas y Diplonduros
3. Cybertango
4. Livertango

Instrumentation

Violin 1
Violin 2
Violoncello
Double Bass
el. Bass
Accordion I
Accordion II
Piano
Guitar
Clarinet
Percussion

“In April 2002 I was spontaneously asked to be the festival composer for the Third Bergen Tango Festival, which was to take place in September of that year. There was no fee and no guarantee of performance, although the latter aspect was not made entirely clear. All the same, I had recently (in February) finished writing an as yet unperformed cantata for choir and symphony orchestra with a religious text – another commission without a fee. It had taken me nearly eleven months to complete. The tango proposition was as far removed from the world of the cantata as can be imagined. I welcomed it as an invitation to remain creative. Also as a challenge to write in a style that did not run through my blood and in which I had no direct interest. I originally intended to write five pieces, but only four came into fruition.” …

(b. Turin, 25 July 1883 — d. Rome, 5 March 1947)

(1937)

I Sinfonia. Allegro ma non troppo (p. 1) – Poco meno mosso, calmo (p. 25) – Primo tempo, un poco animato (p. 29) – Pochissimo più tranquillo (p. 44) – di nuovo animato (p. 46) – Sempre più animato e Luminoso (p. 50) – Allargando molto – Animato e festoso (p. 52)
II Passacaglia. Molto grave (Andante molto moderato) (p. 57) – Var. 3. Pochissimo meno mosso
(p. 58) – Var. 5. Un poco più mosso (p. 62) – Var. 6. Ancora un poco più mosso (p. 65) –
Var. 8. Rubato (p. 70) – Divertimento. Tempo del principio (p. 72) – Maggiore. Misterioso e solenne (p. 75) – Var. 9 (Tema aumentato). Dolce e sereno (p. 76) – Sempre molto grave e tranquillo –
Var. 10 (Canone alla quinta) (p. 80) – Var. 11. Pochissimo più mosso (p. 81) – Var. 13. Molto tranquillo (p. 85) – Var. 14. Molto calmo ed espressivo (p. 87) –
Coda. Tempo del principio. Molto grave (p. 90)
III Inno. Allegro impetuoso ed animato (p. 93) – Animato (p. 107) – Molto sonore, ma nobile e non fragoroso (p. 111) – Ancor più animato (p. 113) – Decisamente (p. 115) – Fortissimamente (p. 123) – Un poco pesante (p. 126) – Movendo (p. 129) – Sempre molto animato (p. 130) – Animato e giocoso (p. 136) – Animato e festoso (p. 142)

Alfredo Casella is the scion of a highly respected Italian family of musicians. His grandfather Pietro Casella, a friend of Nicolò Paganini, was a solo cellist in Lisbon and Turin. All three of his sons were also important cellists. The youngest of them, Carlo Casella, Alfredo’s father, deviated from the entertaining virtuoso line and had an immense passion for the solo suites of Johann Sebastian Bach, which Alfredo absorbed as ‘father’s milk’, so to speak….

(b. Sontsovka, 11 (Julian) or 23 (Gregorian) April 1891 – d. Moscow, 5 March 1953)

Scenario by Nikolai Volkov

Preface
One of Prokofiev’s best-known ballets, alongside ‘Romeo and Juliet’, is ‘Cinderella’, op. 87, also known as ‘Cinderella’ or ‘Solushka’. It consists of three acts in seven pictures and six decorations.

The composer and pianist Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was born in Sontsovka in the Russian Empire on 11 April according to the Julian calendar and on 23 April 1891 according to the Gregorian calendar. He grew up on the Bachmut estate (now Krasne), where his father was an estate manager. Prokofiev received first piano lessons from his mother at the age of four. He began composing in 1896, in 1902 and 1903, he took private lessons with Reinhold Gliére and from 1904 with Alexander Glazunov. In 1904, at the age of thirteen, he entered the St Petersburg Conservatory, where he studied composition, counterpoint, orchestration, piano and conducting with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Anatoly Lyadov, among others, until 1914. He regularly gave concerts as a pianist from 1908, also with his own works. He went to the USA in 1918, to France in 1920 and returned to Russia in 1936. In 1914/15 he was invited by Serge Diaghilev to compose his first ballet ‘Ala and Lolli’, which was withdrawn due to its musical proximity to Stravinsky’s ‘Le sacre du printemps’.1 His musical fairy tale ‘Peter and the Wolf’ became best known. …